After nearly five years of loyal service, Mininova disabled access to over a million torrent files when it partly shut down its website. Starting today, only approved publishers are able to upload files to the site, but luckily there are plenty of alternatives and potential replacements BitTorrent users can flock to.

Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except those that were uploaded through its content distribution service. Mininova's founders took the drastic decision after they lost a civil dispute against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, and were ordered to remove all infringing torrents from the site.

The copyright case between AFACT, representing the movie industry, and Aussie ISP iiNet is set to conclude today. The Internet Industry Association was disallowed from becoming a friend of the court, and the chief movie industry barrister said that ISPs who refuse to forward infringement notices should get out of the business.

As many as 25,000 BT and 5,000 customers of other ISPs will be receiving shock letters demanding big payments during the coming weeks. Lawyers in the UK have been granted more court orders which force ISPs to hand over the details of individuals who they say have been monitored sharing hardcore pornography.

Preliminary injunctions against two file-sharing portals have been overturned, paving the way for a re-opening. The sites' lawyers have proven that hard drive evidence collected during a controversial raid against the sites' admin is worthless, and the anti-piracy group involved has been fined by the court for acting in bad faith.

Already making a name for itself by offering new and innovative features, KickassTorrents is a relatively new BitTorrent site that launched just a few months ago. Recently the site quadrupled its traffic, largely thanks to its inclusion in the integrated search engine of the BitTorrent client, Vuze.

The European Commission has issued a warning to the Spanish government that any plan to disconnect file-sharers from the Internet without involving a judge would create conflict with the EU. This statement could also throw the three-strikes plans of the UK government and the Irish ISP Eircom into serious doubt.

A few days ago we reported that Lady Gaga earned a measly $167 for more than a million plays on the music streaming service, Spotify. According to new information received from music industry insiders, it turns out that Spotify isn't ripping off the artists, the labels are.